Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Spiegelman, Art [Penguin Books, Limited (UK), 2003] (Paperback) [Paperback]

Why it's worth it

Art Spiegelman's Holocaust memoir is the only graphic novel ever to win a Pulitzer Prize, and this Penguin edition collects both volumes in one paperback. If you've never read a graphic novel and you're not sure the format is for you, start here.

It's the book that settled the argument about whether graphic novels count as literature. The Pulitzer board gave Maus a Special Award in 1992, and no other graphic novel has won one since. That matters less as a bragging point than as a signal: the same institutions that judge serious nonfiction looked at this and didn't blink. If a skeptical friend or parent needs one book to change their mind about the format, this is reliably it.

The two-timeline structure is what makes it work, not the mice. Spiegelman draws himself interviewing his aging, difficult father Vladek in New York, and he draws Vladek's memories of Auschwitz in stark expressionist black and white. So you're reading a book about the Holocaust and a book about a strained father-son relationship at once. The metaphor — Jews as mice, Nazis as cats — sounds reductive until you're twenty pages in and stop noticing it.

From our review of 6 graphic novels for adults, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +It's the book that settled the argument about whether graphic novels count as literature
• +The two-timeline structure is what makes it work, not the mice
• +This edition gives you the complete story in one book
• +It's the most-taught graphic novel in American universities, which means help is everywhere

What to know

• –This is a UK Penguin edition, and a US Pantheon paperback of the same content exists
• –The subject matter is genuinely hard, and it doesn't let up
• –The art is spare and it's meant to be